My father Lt. Ernest Anders Erickson shown here while he was with the 95th Bomb Group (Heavy). He flew B-17s with the 334th Squadron and was stationed at Horham Airfield in England between February and October of 1944.

Lt. Erickson like so many airmen that had joined the Air Corps in 1942 and 1943, had set their sights on flying fighter planes like the one below. Some became fighter pilots, some washed out and others due to the need of the Air Corps became pilots of the "Heavies" as they were referred to. These ships were better known as the B-17 Flying Fortress, B-24 Liberator and the B-25 Mitchell.

My dad did his best to stay in flight training and not wash out. He watched many of his buddies disappear to other branches of the service or become Navigators, Bombardiers or gunners. In October 1943 he received his wings at Blackland Airfield in Texas and became a B-17 pilot.

Here in the first photograph taken in August of 1944 he is sitting in the cockpit of a P-47 Thunderbolt about to take it up for a spin over the English countryside. And like his dream as a child to follow in the footsteps of his hero Charles Lindbergh, for the time being flying solo in a P-47 Thunderbolt was dream worthy material.